Michael Weiss - October 7, 1994

Buchenwald and Zeitz

Your browser does not support the audio element.

What did he say?

Well we been--everything we do alright--we just manage to, to talk to each other. I have to tell you a little story. [pause] We were marching home from the factory. We were working in a factory where they supposed to make gasoline out of coal.

This was in...

This is already in Zeitz after Buchenwald. And we were walking home and we were talking something. The German guard--I was talking, so he says to my father, "Slap him." He wouldn't slap me and we were marching. And he said again, "Slap him." He took us out of the line, out of the line. He gave me two slaps in the face. And he says go back to...and I went. And then, I wouldn't know to my father but and then he was ??? thought that already. I couldn't understand it. He made him run to the line and he was behind them. When my father got to the line, his face was bleeding. And nobody looked. We went to the barracks. They didn't send him to the doctor already. They didn't much to, to wipe the bleeding or something. That kept on bleeding on and off and he became a little old man. He became an old, beaten up--somehow he gave up. The feeling was to fight for life.

Did he die at Zeitz?

Well, the way it was by us, every so often they took a thousand people who was already tired, couldn't work and things, and they send them to Buchenwald, with the knowledge, with the knowledge that there is a hospital there and they gonna be in the hospital. So in January of '45 he--they elected him to be in that thousand. And I went and volunteered. I wanted to go. And there was another Kapo they didn't took. ??? Now I find it out later that what they did with this thousand, they gassed them.

Where?

In Buchenwald. And you know, again I get back, but in Zeitz, many people die. I know a friend, his father died as well. I know a, a, a father with a son who died there. And what did they done with this people? Did they send them to Buchenwald for to burn them? Or they bury them there? In Zeitz? Or they just throw them to the dogs or what they do with these people? [pause]

You--you went, went to Auschwitz you said it probably must have been May. After Pesach...

Yes, yes, yes, yes...

After Pesach.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And you were in Auschwitz...

I was in Auschwitz...

For a week.

For a week.

And then to Buchenwald. How did you get to Buchenwald? By train?

By train.

Also boxcar?

Same. The same uh, cattle cars. But yes.

And when you got to Buchenwald, what was it like there?

I got to Buchenwald and I was there but ten days. Maybe two weeks or something. And they send us up to Zeitz.